Chuck Logan - The Price of Blood

“So what’s going to be, another tantrum. Or can we talk?” asked Cyrus.

“Talk,” said Broker. His shoulders slumped. He didn’t have to act exhausted.

“Good. Let’s have a drink at the bar,” said Cyrus. “They resurrected some of the old decor as part of the open door policy.” They both pulled up stools. “Try a Huda beer, they bottle it here in town,” he said.

Behind the bar three mildewed movie posters were framed under glass. They harkened back to the war, when the old restaurant had been on the riverbank and was an American haunt. Cafard was an expression the French had used to convey being far from home in all this heat. The Blues.

The first poster advertised The Quiet American with Audie Murphy. Then came Marlon Brando in The Ugly American . The third had John Wayne with his love handles on parade in the Green Berets .

Cyrus raised his glass to the posters and proposed an old toast: “From quiet to ugly to stupid in one generation.” He took a sip of beer and glanced around. “Remember how Gaston, the old proprietor, liked the movies. He used to say ‘America is a movie the rest of the world watches in the dark.’” Cyrus LaPorte smiled. “Not anymore.”

Broker stared into his glass of beer. They were getting ready to kill him, and Trin and Nina. Maybe Lola was going to help. Maybe she was in harm’s way herself. Maybe Trin was being bought off by Cyrus and Lola. Trin was right about one thing: They all had ropes around their necks. Apparently LaPorte thought he had the longest rope, so he was indulging his charming raconteur side.

Where was Bevode ?

“How did you get onto this stuff? Jimmy wouldn’t say,” Broker asked finally.

“Pure accident,” said Cyrus. “In seventy-three an ARVN captain brought me a gold ingot he’d found in the river bed near the mouth of the Perfume. He wanted help getting his family to the States.

“We spent the next year combing the river location that captain gave me, just Jimmy and I. And we found it. Maybe when the French looted the citadel one ship sunk, got buried when the river changed course. Or maybe the Vietnamese had hidden it. Who knows?

“We dug it out and crated it, box by box. Bringing in a boat would involve other people. But I could get a helicopter. With Jimmy, and a couple of Air America guys I trusted, I was going to sling it out. Hide it in Laos. Then activity in the sector picked up. We had to move it. We snuck it into Hue. Then we disguised it as an ammo pallet. I was in Danang arranging for the helicopter when the Commies came down and took the city.”

LaPorte pursed his lips. “So I was only taking back what was mine by right of discovery. On hindsight, my method was regrettable.”

Perhaps he meant that as an apology. Broker used it as a cue. He let his shoulders sag, ground his teeth, and gave in.

“Can you keep Bevode under control?”

Cyrus toyed with his glass. “Can you keep Nina Pryce quiet?”

The questions passed each other in the soft evening air. Unanswered. LaPorte said, “Meet me at seven in the morning, in front of the Century Hotel. I’ll be sitting there alone, in the car with Nina. She gets out. You get in.”

“A trade,” said Broker.

“That way if she talks-”

“If she doesn’t, what happens to me?”

“That depends. The girl is a problem. But maybe we can work it out. Cheer up. You might wind up liking hanging out with us.”

They ordered coffee.

“So how’d Jimmy do it?” asked Cyrus.

Broker shrugged. “The chopper set down on the coast and they stashed the load in a ravine, blew a small hillside to cover it, and took off again.”

Cyrus’s pale ice eyes did not waver. He didn’t care. Nothing mattered except getting closer to the gold.

“It’s worth a lot more than its weight, isn’t it?” said Broker.

LaPorte nodded. “You have no idea. There are Cham artifacts mixed in with the gold that are a thousand years old. They’re priceless. The trick is to keep it off the market, release it bit by bit to museums all over the world. That’s how you make the money. What about the bars I found in the water?”

Broker said, “Jimmy caused the crash at sea. The other crew members drowned because they were weighted down with gold souvenirs.”

“Jimmy always was tricky,” said Cyrus in an appraising voice. “I could never get into his banking records. That was the key.” Cyrus nodded.

“Jimmy thought it should be returned to the Vietnamese.”

“Big of him,” said Cyrus.

“I thought so, too,” said Broker.

“What about Trin?”

“Trin’s screwed here. But he went through the reeducation camps, that makes him eligible to immigrate to America if he has a sponsor. I promised to help him get out,” Broker ad-libbed.

“So why’d you bring the girl?” Cyrus was moving right along.

“Once I found out what we were on to I thought it was best to keep her close.”

LaPorte nodded. “Loose cannon.”

Broker paused. “One last question. You’ve already got it all: wealth, position, a reputation. Why take the chance on losing it all? It’s not like you need it.”

LaPorte chuckled. “It’s not just gold to be exchanged on the market. It’s a national treasure. It’s going to make my reputation.”

“There’ll be an international stink.”

LaPorte drummed his fingers on the bar. “What the hell, whatever they write on my tombstone, it won’t be: He showed up on time for work every day.”

Broker raised an eyebrow.

“Somebody owes me,” LaPorte said with conviction. Some of that old flintlock look came into his eyes. “All the time I put in here. Hell, I would have used that gold to keep fighting from the hills.”

Maybe he really believed that once. Maybe he still did. It didn’t matter.

Cyrus LaPorte reached across the bar and took one of Broker’s cigarettes. He studied the inscription on Broker’s lighter. Then he lit the cigarette, inhaled, exhaled, and studied the smoldering tobacco.

Over his shoulders the clouds, at sunset, looked like a forest fire in the mountains. Sampans with groups of traditional musicians cruised on the Perfume River. Voices and the tremble of stringed instruments carried on the breeze. The boatmen placed paper lanterns, illuminated by candles, in the water. They bobbed in the soft, warm night.

“Nineteen sixty-nine,” Cyrus ruminated. “I flew back home between tours. Braniff flight out of old Saigon. We were coming in, making the approach on Oakland.

“Pilot announced that we were coming up on the coastline of the States. Suddenly it became silent on that airplane. And the pilot took some liberties; he swung that big bird, banking left and right so everybody on both sides could get a look of the coast…”

Cyrus took a deep drag on the cigarette, screwed up his lips and blew out the smoke.

“The stewardesses knew. They must of been pros on those flights. They all took their posts in the aisles and every one of them looked down those rows of young guys who were wearing that green with the red dirt fade. They could read the shoulder patches…see the CIBs.”

He curled his lower lip. “Nina Pryce thinks she deserves a CIB. Hell, there was more combat experience on that one airplane than in the whole goddamn Gulf War. Those stews knew they were hauling infantry. All those young American men, sitting up, looking straight ahead. Absolutely quiet. Polite.

“And every one of those women began to cry. Silent men, crying women standing at their posts like statues. I pity those girls for the weight they carried. They were sin eaters for the whole damn nation. And the plane landed and nobody would get out. Nobody moved from their seats.”